Natural Selection
by j-hambys
Summary: Post Tasm AU: Spider-man has fallen. The Lizard holds George Stacy captive in Oscorp Tower and Gwen will stop at nothing to save her father. But what price is she willing to pay in order to get him back? Movie-Verse. Curt/Gwen.
1. Beginning of the End

**A/N:** So after having this idea for a fic for like months now, I've finallly gotten Microsoft Word back and decided to have a go at writing a multi-chapter _The Amazing Spider-man_ fic. After watching the movie again, I feel like I had a better feel for everything like the characters and the inner workings of Oscorp, which obviously becomes pretty important later on in this story. Let me tell you all right away that there is NO CHARACTER DEATH here. I would never kill off Peter and hey, there's even alive!George in this story. So this is sort of an AU set post TASM, sort of a what-if Curt hadn't caught Peter in time before he'd fallen off of Oscorp Tower, and what-if he hadn't killed Gwen's father but instead had somehow just incompacitated him during the fight and then proceeded to hold him captive at Oscorp? Well, I decided to explore these possibilities, and well, here's the result! The central pairing is obviously Curt/Gwen, but there's a little Peter/Gwen in the beginning, and some Gwen/M.J. friendship thrown in too.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Spider-man or any of its characters.

* * *

_He's so close now_, he thinks with the serum in his hand as he climbs the top of the tower. The Lizard was on his tail, but the Ganali device was so close that he couldn't let anything get in his way now, _just a little further_.

He finally makes it to the top, quickly replacing the reptilian serum in the device with the blue antidote that Gwen had cooked up for him in the lab.

_3…2…1_

The projectile launches into the sky, a blue smoke cloud immediately following its launch. Peter breathes a sigh of relief.

The Lizard falls off the high point of the tower, but grabs holds of the edge of the roof before falling off of the building. The pointed section of the tower that currently housed the Ganali device is about to give due to it's exposure to the liquid nitrogen, Peter can feel the vibration under his feet as the metal begins to break off of its hinges.

He dives off of the surface just before it smashes into the roof of the tower, rolling off of it and nearly crushing him in the process.

It all happens almost too quickly for him to absorb, one minutes he's dodged the falling point of the tower, and the next thing he knows Connors is gripping his wrist, his reptilian mask fading away due to the release of the antidote. Peter also realizes, with a sudden panic as he watches Connors's scales fade from his face that the arm of his that is now holding onto him is disintegrating as well.

The skin on Curt's right arm begins to peel off like a cocoon that had previously housed a caterpillar, the muscle and bone slowly disintegrating into nothing.

Before Peter can say anything or even have time to process what's happened, Connors's right arm has broken off completely.

And then he is falling.

* * *

Traffic was so congested that night she must've been in that squad car for what normally would feel like an eternity. She didn't feel anything though. There was no concept of time, or of how long the drive from Oscorp Tower to her apartment building had really been. She sat in the backseat, head pressed against the window. The only thing she would ever remember about the drive was how cool the glass had felt against her cheek, and the fact that the traffic on the busy streets of Manhattan was moving so slowly that the squad car had felt like it was hardly moving at all. They were in a panic, clearly. Gwen hadn't heard any news coverage of the events unfolding at Oscorp, but she could obviously gather that the people were clearing out of Manhattan as quickly as possible. She didn't really blame them, but in that moment she was so numb that she could hardly feel much of anything at all.

The officer drops her off at her apartment building, she doesn't acknowledge him as she mechanically slides out of the backseat and leaves the vehicle. It was nothing personal, she was just in such a fog she could hardly think let alone speak properly. Their usual doorman isn't stationed in front of the door like he usually is; leaving Gwen to assume that he'd left the city as well. She remembers a comment Peter had made about how intimidating the doorman had been, a wave of despair crashing through the numbness of her mind.

When she makes it up to her apartment, her whole family is sitting in the living room in front of the television, no doubt watching the news coverage of what was happening at the tower. Her mother's eyes are slightly misted over with unshed tears even before she sees her daughter walk into the living room, but when Helen's eyes meet Gwen's the older woman crumbles as she gets up from the couch to embrace her daughter.

"Oh Gwen, my baby…" Her mother holds her so tight that Gwen can feel her convulse every time she sobs. "We all thought the worst."

She doesn't know what to say in response. _Thought the worst? The worst of what? _The memories of confronting what used to be her mentor in the labs of Oscorp had been blocked from the surface of her brain as if her psyche was trying to protect itself from having a nervous breakdown. She recalls the DNA laboratory at Oscorp, creating a serum for Peter, and then _he_ had shown up and oh…They'd actually thought he'd hurt her, no worse. _They'd thought the worst._ Gwen just embraces her mother and tries to be strong for her and for the sake of her brothers.

Helen pulls her daughter into the spot nearest her on the couch, keeping her arm around Gwen the whole time. Gwen's oldest brother, Phillip, sits on the other side of their mother while Howard and Simon sit in front of the couch near their feet. The Stacys don't take their eyes off the coverage unfolding before them. There is an imperative warning for a city wide evacuation, specifically anyone south of 54th street. There is a terrible dread and anticipation that she feels for wanting to know what's happening with her father and Peter on Oscorp Tower. Her wish is granted when the news footage cuts to a scene that was being captured by a helicopter, the footage isn't perfect but it's enough for her to get the gist of the scene unfolding in front of the camera. Peter is climbing on top of the tower towards the Ganali device, the serum Gwen had created for him in the labs of Oscorp in hand. Curt – er the Lizard, (_was he really even Curt anymore?) _follows behind him in hot pursuit.

Her mother removes her arm from around Gwen to grab her hand and hold it tightly, a heavy tension filling the room. _This is it, we'll either all be monsters in a few moments or we won't be. _He only had a few seconds as the Ganali device counts back from five, Gwen and her family sit in heavy silence with bated breath. Howard and Simon have moved up to the couch now, squeezing in on either side of Helen. Neither of them shed a tear, like their older sister they must have been too stunned by everything to even give off any emotional response to what may be the end of their humanity.

_3…2…1…_

She had debated on closing her eyes, but instead decides on facing the imminent chemical attack with her eyes open. What she sees when the time runs out is something that she hadn't been expecting. A blue cloud of smoke disperses over the city, the same color as the reptilian antidote.

He'd really done it, Peter had saved the city. The reporter in the studio is nearly ecstatic, informing the city that the chemical attack has been averted and that the city of New York was saved thanks to the efforts of Spider-man.

The reporter pauses though, pressing a hand to her ear, as if new information were being delivered to her via her earpiece, the gleeful look which had just been occupying her pretty face falls immediately. The news the reporter has just received could not have been good.

The reporter attempts to regain some of her composure and once again makes eye contact with the camera. Although she is clearly trying to collect herself, Gwen and probably the entire Stacy clan could see that the woman was near tears.

Gwen isn't sure why, but the sight of the distressed reporter drives her to stand up from her seat on the couch, careful not to block her family's view.

"This just in New York…" She can barely get the words out, this was bad – very bad.

"Spider-man, the masked vigilante, has fallen from the one-hundred and eighth story of Oscorp Tower. Paramedics are already on the scene and are taking him to the nearest hospital. No sure word on the current state of his health, but we'll keep giving updates as this story develops."

Gwen's legs buckle under her, causing her to fall to her knees in the spot she'd been standing in. A small gasp leaves her throat, silent tears streaking her cheeks. Still, she does not sob or convulse, and at this point she's one hundred percent sure that she's gone into shock. Peter had fallen off of the tower. One of the tallest buildings in Manhattan. No human being could ever survive such a fall, but Peter was far from any ordinary person. There had to be a chance he'd survive, the reporter had even said that they hadn't been positive on the state of his health. But she wouldn't fool herself. Superhuman abilities or not, there was no way Peter would simply walk away from this unscathed.

_Peter. _

His name is on the tip of her tongue, and when she first heard the news she'd almost whispered it under her breath, but she stops herself when she remembers that her mother and brothers still don't know who he really is. Another dreadful thought comes to mind when Gwen realizes that they'd remove his mask at the hospital, and soon enough everyone would know who he was. Peter Parker, a mere senior in high school, had saved an entire city, and this was the thanks he'd gotten. Everyone would know who Spider-man was now, and every criminal in New York would be gunning for Peter Parker and everyone he loved.

And it was all _his_ fault.

* * *

Her mother turns the coverage off after they all hear what had happened to Spider-man, citing her reasoning as she knows hearing more about it will just upset Howard and Simon even more. The boys insist on hearing about what happens, telling her they have to know if Spider-man will be okay, but Helen had refused to hear any of it and tells the boys that it's time for bed.

When her brothers are all asleep, Gwen wanders out onto the terrace, seeing her mother in her white robe, staring out at the Manhattan skyline. For a moment, she debates on giving her mother a moment alone, but her desire to be there for her mother during such a difficult time wins out.

Gwen walks towards her, and upon further inspection she sees a cigarette poised between the middle and index finger of her right hand, although she has no intention of calling her on it. She rests her hands on the cement ledge when she walks to stand next to her mother, who still only stares out into the distance, seemingly oblivious to her daughter's presence.

They stay like this for a couple minutes, both of them standing side by side staring at the gleaming lights of the city; the beautiful lights almost enough to make the two of them forget about the fact that both of the men they loved were in danger.

_Almost._

Her mother shocks her by being the one to break the silence. "He'll be okay, you know. Peter."

The look Gwen shoots her mother is almost incredulous, but she tries her best to conceal her surprise that Helen had picked up on something that Gwen had thought she'd done a decent job of hiding. She entertains the idea of playing dumb, but it's pointless since she knows that his secret identity would be made public soon enough anyway.

So instead she simply says, "I hope so."

Gwen also wants to say in response that she's sure her father is alright too, but truthfully she has absolutely no idea. The news coverage that the family had seen up to said nothing about the Captain of the NYPD, which could mean two very different things. Either her father was alright, or god forbid, the complete opposite.

"Have you heard anything about Dad?"

Helen takes a long drag of her cigarette before answering. "I've been too afraid to turn on the news. I've waited for a call from the NYPD, but no word. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing." She turns to her daughter. "Did you see him, before he went up into the tower?"

Gwen blinks. "Yeah – I did." She's ashamed when she looks back on the moment now. Her last words to her father were for him to make sure that Peter was okay, when in reality it was her father who she should have been equally concerned for.

"He was in a panic you know. He called me after they let Spider-man go. Said you were in the tower and that maniac was headed towards you. I didn't know what to do, I just prayed, and made your father promise he'd bring you back and that you'd be okay. He promised me, that poor man. I made him make a promise to bring his little girl home alive when he didn't even know if he could."

Helen was crying quietly now, her left hand pressed to her mouth muffling the sobs.

"Hey Mom…" Gwen puts a comforting hand on her mother's shoulder. "It's okay, I'm here. I'm alright." She feels almost selfish after she says it, knowing that even though she was home in one piece, her father could still be in Oscorp Tower with the Lizard for all anyone knew.

Would Curt really do it though? Would he really _hurt_ her father if he had gotten in his way? Would he do worse?

After a few more minutes of heavy silence Gwen and Helen head back into the living room where Helen finally dares to switch to the news coverage of what was unfolding in terms of the events that had occurred at Oscorp earlier at night.

Spider-man is alive, in a coma. How long he will be, doctors at the hospital can't predict at this stage. But all that matters is that he's still alive and Gwen practically sheds tears of joy because of it.

George Stacy had been presumed missing, but as it hadn't yet been twenty-four hours, an official statement couldn't be released yet. He was last seen entering Oscorp Tower unaccompanied to go to the aid of Spider-man. Eyewitnesses report that once they saw him go in, they didn't see him come out.

No one on any of the news or radio stations would say what everyone already knew. George Stacy was still in Oscorp Tower with the Lizard. No one would go near the place, now that the city would be on constant alert of another chemical attack. They'd seen what it – what _he_ was capable of. The damage done on the Williamsburg Bridge and at Midtown High School would attest to that. The fact that some members of the NYPD had actually been infected with the serum when he'd unleashed canisters of it on them earlier would make people fear that he probably had a nearly unlimited supply of it in his arsenal. On top of it all, the city's last hope, the hero everyone had needed, had fallen.

He'd saved the city, but the villain had still knocked him down.

Whether the Lizard had hoped to create fear and disarray in the city, he'd sure as hell gotten it.

* * *

She stands underneath the shower head, hoping the hot water gliding off her skin will somehow purify her of the awful events that had occurred that day. Her skin is almost raw when she finishes scrubbing it, convinced after ten minutes that she's been properly cleansed.

Gwen decides to stay in her mother's bed that night. The last thing she wanted was for her mom to wake up alone that next morning and remember the terrible reality that her father was missing and that he may never come home to her or their children again.

Two sleeping pills later and her mother was sleeping soundly beside her. Gwen was glad for it, hoping that in the midst of all this madness that her mother could at least find some peace, even if it was just for a short moment.

Gwen doesn't sleep though, declining her mom's offer for a sleeping pill. She just sits awake on her father's side of the bed. Perhaps it wasn't a good idea, sleeping in her parent's bed. A place that he'd occupied for so long, but that he might never come back to again. His pillow even smelt like him. This was torture, she knew it. It was her own personal hell.

It didn't take her long to make the decision. After the news cast, she'd had the idea in her mind, weighed to pros and cons and even tried to calculate the success rate of her mission, which obviously given what she was up against, wasn't exactly good.

But now she was certain. To hell with the police. To hell with the Lizard. To hell with it all.

Tomorrow she was going to get her father back.

* * *

**A/N:** So during my Tasm re-watch I realized that the launch of the missile from the Ganali device was pretty much immediately after Gwen had gotten out of the tower and into the squad car, which makes the timeline of Gwen getting back to her apartment at the same time as the projectile launching a bit unrealistic, but for the sake of creating drama and tension, I decided to have the events spaced further apart. Anyway, I already have chapter 2 of this written and most of chapter 3, which is where we get some Curt/Gwen interaction, or more accurately put Lizard/Gwen interaction. But in chapter 2 we get Harry and M.J.!


	2. Promises, broken

**A/N:** Like I mentioned before, there's some Harry and M.J. in this one, and in honor of the Marc Webb casting versions of their characters, I imagined Shailene Woodley for Mary Jane here because I thought she was amazing in _The Descendents_ and I think she'll be a great Mary Jane in the Tasm sequel. And I obviously imagined Dane DeHaan for Harry, because I loved him in _Chronicle_ and I was pretty thrilled when I'd heard that he'd been cast for the new Harry. Also, although they weren't even in The Amazing Spider-man, there are established friendships here between Harry and Peter and M.J. and Gwen. So even though we didn't see any of it in the first film, Harry and Peter have a friendship here similar to what they had in the Sam Raimi Spider-man franchise. And in Marc Webb's version of Spider-man I assume Mary Jane will also be Peter's neighbor, and in this story there's an established friendship with them as well. Anyway, I'm rambling now so here's chapter 2!

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Spider-man or any of its characters.

* * *

Her eyes are already open when the alarm clock on the nightstand on her father's side of the bed goes off.

_7:00 a.m. _This was considered sleeping in for her father, who was usually awake by five in the morning. It must have been set later for the weekends, she thinks as she realizes that it's a Saturday.

Days and time seemed so trivial now, but at the same time more precious and valuable than ever. Every second she lay in bed was a second her father spent in the tower with the Lizard.

Her mother was thankfully still asleep, as Gwen slipped out quietly as not to disturb her.

Before she does this though, she slowly slides open the top drawer to her father's nightstand, where she knows he keeps his Swiss army knife. She'd thought about whether or not she should bring a gun along with her for defense, but not even she knew where her father had his guns locked up and she hadn't had much training with them anyway. The Swiss army knife was primarily a tool used for practical uses, not for self defense.

She could think of a practical use for it or two once she came face to face with the Lizard again.

She makes her way to the hall bathroom, switching on the light and facing her reflection in the mirror above the sink. The face in front of her wasn't unrecognizable. It still possessed the same cat-like blue eyes and the slightly pouted lips, but gray shadows had taken residence beneath her eyes, no doubt from a night lacking any sleep whatsoever. Her skin was even paler than usual, and her cheeks had no color to them at all.

She brushes her teeth and pulls her blond hair back into a ponytail, not bothering to dwell on her appearance much as there were far more important things occupying her mind at the moment.

Her entire wardrobe consisted of skirts and knee-high socks, and it wasn't until then that she wished that for once she had invested in at least one pair of jeans. In the end she makes do with the blue sweater she'd worn the night Peter had eaten branzino with her family, a gray wool skirt, with a pair of light gray stockings.

She tries to make her way to the coat closet as quietly as she possibly can, praying that she won't wake her mother or brothers while she's in the process of leaving.

She pulls her beige jacket and brown leather boots out from the closet, putting them on as carefully as she can when she hears a noise.

She looks up and sees Simon, standing in front of her, still in his pajamas.

"Where are you going so early?" He rubs sleep from his eyes, completely unaware that he's caught his older sister in the process of executing a suicide mission.

She kneels down slightly to get closer to his level. "Can you keep a secret?"

He looks up at his sister, slightly baffled. "Sure, but I guess it depends on the secret."

There was no use in trying to fool Simon. He may have been her youngest brother, but he was nine years old and there was no use in lying to him or dancing around what was really happening here.

"I'm going to get Dad back."

"_How?_ Do you even know where he is?"

"Yeah. He's at Oscorp. I know the ins and outs of the place, it shouldn't be too hard."

She leaves out the obvious threat of a nine-foot-tall monster with razor sharp teeth and retractable claws but she decides to omit that detail for Simon's benefit.

"What about the Lizard? Isn't he there too?"

Damnit. Everyone had always said the Stacy family was a smart bunch.

"Well – yeah, but he shouldn't give me too much trouble." _He's probably going to rip me limb from limb, but that's beside the point._

"What about Spider-man? Why can't we just wait until he gets better so he can get Dad out?"

He sure was an inquisitive little thing, wasn't he?

"Look, Simon." Gwen puts a hand on his shoulder. "Spider-man might be – out of commission for a little while. I'm sure he'll get better, but it'll take time. And during that time, it looks like you've got me instead."

Simon looks confused, which sort of offends her a little. "So you're like, a back-up for Spider-man?"

"Well, I guess you could sort of put it that way."

"We're all doomed."

"Well thanks for the vote of confidence!" Gwen whispers loudly, trying her best to sound wounded without being loud enough to wake the rest of her sleeping family members.

"You can't go there by yourself. What if you get hurt?" He's concerned now, worried that like their father, she may not come back. This is why she'd went out of her way to not wake anyone, she couldn't handle saying good-bye.

Especially when it might be for good.

"Hey, I can take care of myself, okay? Your big sister is stronger than she looks." What killed her most was that she couldn't with utter certainty promise Simon that she would come back, or that she would even be okay. Maybe she'd get lucky like she had at the lab, when he'd simply taken the Ganali device and left her alone. If she wasn't a true threat to him maybe he wouldn't hurt her, but there was no way she could say for certain.

He was most likely holding her father captive, and had perhaps even somehow caused Peter to fall off of Oscorp Tower, nearly killing him in the process.

She didn't trust Connors either way, which was why she couldn't afford to leave her father at Oscorp with him much longer.

Simon is looking up at her questioningly, doubt clearly present in his blue eyes that are the same color as hers.

He was afraid for her, maybe even more than she was for herself. It was almost enough to make her stay behind, enough to make her realize how insane her plan was and that she should just wait until the NYPD worked out a plan to save her father.

But she couldn't wait that long, and she couldn't sit idly by while her father was in danger.

She kisses Simon on the forehead, then presses her forehead to his. "Tell Mom I'm sorry I didn't say good-bye. I couldn't do it. Tell her I'm going to bring Dad back. It'll all be okay somehow, it has to be. Take care of them all for me, okay?" Her eyes are watering, but she can't cry in front of her little brother or he'll realize that something is truly wrong, if he hadn't realized it already, which he almost certainly had.

"Okay. You and Dad better come back soon." She hears the sadness in his voice, but doesn't see him shed any tears.

* * *

There was one last stop she had to make before she headed towards the tower. When she hails a cab in front of her apartment, she gives the driver directions to the hospital that Peter was reported to be staying at.

Traffic wasn't too bad at 7:45 on a Saturday morning, so even though the hospital was across town she makes it there in a little over fifteen minutes.

Her visit would have to be short, but she couldn't head off to what was perhaps her imminent death without seeing Peter.

She checks in with the attending nurse on the main floor, a woman who looks to be in her early to mid forties. The woman seemed kind enough, which was good, as Gwen was feeling a bit on edge to be having any encounters with a short-tempered hospital staff member.

Gwen had considered that perhaps at this point the hospital was only allowing family members in to see Peter, but when she asks the nurse which room Peter Parker was staying in, the woman simply tells her the room number and returns to whatever business she'd been previously occupied with on her computer.

It seemed like sort of an odd occurrence, but she decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Peter's room was on the third floor, in room 315. When Gwen gets to the third floor by elevator, she sees Peter's aunt May sitting in the waiting area, looking down at the coffee being held in her hands, her brown wavy hair casting a curtain on her face.

Gwen approaches her slowly, as if trying her best not to startle her. She, surprisingly, had never met May personally, although she had seen pictures and heard a lot about her and his uncle Ben from Peter. "May?"

Peter's aunt looks up from her coffee. At first there is a slight confusion in her eyes, but it's only second later that it's followed by a look of recognition and May offers her a small smile. Before Gwen knows it she's set down her coffee and May is hugging her.

"Oh Gwen! I've heard so much about you from Peter. It's so good to finally meet you, I'm just so sorry it had to be under these circumstances."

May pulls away slightly so that she can look at her. "My gosh, you're even prettier in person. I've only seen pictures, he'd had you on his computer for weeks."

Gwen smiles a bit. "So I've heard." She leaves out the part where Peter's uncle was the one who told her this. "How is he doing? Peter?"

May's brown eyes look a bit downcast. "When I had first heard about him being – well you know."

Gwen nods.

"I couldn't believe it. Well, I suppose it wasn't exactly hard to believe, given the fact that he'd been so distant recently and had been staying out so late, even on school nights. I never would have suspected it, but when they called me and told me, suddenly everything made sense. After they told me that well, that was when they told me he'd fallen off the tower…" Her voice gets quieter at the end, as if she's struggling to keep her composure.

Gwen places a supportive hand on her shoulder, urging her to go on.

"They'd told me he was badly injured, but that somehow – miraculously, he was going to live. The doctors had never seen anything like it. Every broken bone, all the damaged tissue in his body, has been healing at an accelerated rate. Recovery won't happen over night, but they say at the rate he's healing, they predict that he may be completely healed in just a matter of weeks." May is crying now, tears of joy. Gwen knew this because she was smiling even as tears stained her cheeks. "No permanent damage, a true miracle."

And Gwen can't help but follow her lead, and then she is crying too because through all her worry and panic whether Peter would be alright had been lifted because her amazing, super-powered boyfriend was going to make a full recovery.

"Has he woken up yet?" Gwen asks.

May shakes her head. "Not yet. The doctors say that at the rate he's healing, the coma should only last as long as it takes his body to repair itself, which in this case they said could be anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, but they seemed very optimistic."

"Would you mind if I went in to see him?"

"No! Of course not. Go right in, there are a couple of his friends from school visiting right now."

Friends from school? Who else would be visiting a hospital at just shortly after eight in the morning?

When Gwen enters room 315, she can see the back of Harry Osborn's blond head, and Mary Jane Watson seated on the other side of the hospital bed. Peter lays on the bed peacefully, hooked up to a ventilator and a machine which monitored his heart rate, which at the moment was steady. Harry is the first to notice her.

"Gwen." He hugs her, although she'd never peg him for the hugging type. But for some reason during hard times like these, all physical barriers between people seemed to collapse and things like handholding and hugging seemed less uncomfortable and more natural and in some cases almost necessary.

When she pulls away, she sees Mary Jane standing behind Harry, her long red hair worn loose falling past her shoulders, her green eyes staring into hers. Her eyes are tender, and a small, sympathetic smile is spread across her lips.

"You look like hell." Mary Jane says, drinking in Gwen's somewhat disheveled appearance. Gwen knows she means it in a good-natured way, because in their senior year at Midtown Science, the girls had grown surprisingly close despite their many differences.

Gwen smiles a bit, "Well we can't all look like you, M.J."

Mary Jane returns Gwen's smile in response, then simply shrugs her shoulders modestly. Despite the fact that M.J. was often praised for her beauty, with her dazzling green eyes and her long red hair, the girl still managed to remain humble, and perhaps even, Gwen had sometimes thought, a tad insecure. Mary Jane's difficult relationship with her father, Gwen thought, had surely contributed to that in some way. But Mary Jane was the closest girlfriend that Gwen had and she certainly wasn't about to psychoanalyze her friend when she had a few problems of her own at the moment.

"When did you guys get here?"

"I haven't been here for long, I'd probably only gotten here about twenty minutes before you did." Mary Jane replies. "But Harry's been here since late last night." She seemed almost cautious before telling Gwen the second part, as if Harry maybe hadn't wanted anyone else to know he'd been at the hospital that long. But how had Harry even known which hospital Peter was staying at when they hadn't even announced it until the early hours of the morning?

Then it clicks. Last night it hadn't been Peter he was there for.

Norman. It hadn't really occurred to Gwen that while the head of Oscorp Industries battled his illness he'd be staying at a public hospital in the middle of Manhattan. She had always imagined he'd stayed at some renowned hospital where they could supply the best medical care that money could buy. Or perhaps he'd even a have an in-home hospital wing set up in his mansion, hooked up to ventilators and machines while a nurse refilled his IVs. She feels almost guilty for letting her mind wander to such a dark place, especially when it involved Harry's father, but since she'd heard so much of Osborn's illness while interning at Oscorp, her mind couldn't help but drift there once in awhile.

"I'm sorry Harry. How's your father been?"

Harry gives her a non-committal shrug. "He's actually improving, they say." He smiles, and it's infectious because both Gwen and Mary Jane smile as well. "It's so weird to finally have good news, when mostly all of it's been bad. But last night they told me that he's actually getting better, that recovery is looking more and more possible everyday."

"That's great Harry."

Harry clears his throat, as if he were about to broach a delicate subject. "Have you heard anything about your dad yet Gwen?"

Gwen shakes her head and stares down at the white tile floor. "Not much really. Just that people say they saw him go into Oscorp but they never saw him come out. They haven't made any official statement about him being considered missing yet since it's been under twenty-four hours."

"It's too bad that the police are too scared shitless to do anything about it."

Mary Jane shoots him a shocked expression. "Harry!"

"What? It's true. No one will go near the place. That psychopath has everyone running scared."

Gwen almost says that Curt Connors would in _no way_ fit the profile for the personality type of a psychopath, but she decides to let it slide for now.

"I guess we'll just have to leave it up to the police. How they handle it is up to them, but for now, they're all we've got." Gwen says, turning her attention towards an unconscious Peter. She isn't about to allude to Harry or M.J. that she, in fact, was literally about to take matters into her own hands and get her father out of Oscorp herself.

Her gaze doesn't leave Peter. "Do you guys think that maybe I could have a moment alone with him?"

Mary Jane smiles and nods, "Yeah, of course."

The two of them exit the room, Mary Jane giving Gwen a comforting squeeze on the shoulder as she passes her.

Gwen approaches Peter's bedside slowly, feeling more emotional the closer she gets to him. He'd be okay, she knew this now. But the fact that all he'd done was keep innocent people out of harm's way and risk his life for others and here he was, comatose in a hospital bed, seemed so wrong and unfair.

She sits at the edge of the bed, close enough to place her hand over his knuckles.

"I'm so sorry this happened to you Peter. It's so unfair, you saved everyone and this is what you get in return?" Tears stain her cheeks, unable to hold them back now that she's seen the extent of the damage that's been done to him.

"I had to come see you before I left – to get Dad back. I know if you were awake right now, you'd try to stop me and tell me how stupid this is. Which, you wouldn't need to, because I'm fully aware of how stupid it is, but I just can't sit by when there's a chance my father could be alive and that I could maybe save him. And if he is alive now, what if he isn't tomorrow? What if I was too late? I can't take that chance Peter. If there's a chance, even a small one that I can save him, then I'm going to take it. And I know I'm putting myself at risk, which you would also hate. I'm sorry for that, but it was you who always risked your life for everyone else, wasn't it?"

He lays beside her unresponsive, no other noise in the room aside from the heart monitor beeping.

She rests her hand against his face, the same handsome, intelligent boy she'd slowly begun to fall in love with.

"I miss you so much Peter. We all do. Your aunt May, Harry, Mary Jane. We all love you so much, please get better soon."

She plants a gentle kiss on his forehead, and with that she leaves his room.

When she passes the waiting area, she sees that Harry and M.J. have joined May sitting on either side of her. M.J. and May are talking animatedly about something, and both of the women almost seem happy, which warms Gwen's heart a little.

The three of them stand when Gwen approaches them. "I have to go now. It was nice to finally meet you May." She reaches out and hugs May, who returns it as well.

"Likewise dear."

"Harry, I'm glad your dad's getting better. Give him my best wishes for me."

The two of them settle on a handshake instead of a hug this time. "Thanks Gwen, will do."

Before she can say anything, M.J. hugs her tightly, almost tightly enough to knock the air out of her. When she pulls away, there is something disconcerting behind her eyes. Whether it could've been identified as sadness or distress, Gwen couldn't be sure.

"You take care of yourself, okay?" M.J. looks Gwen square in the eye, her hands are still on her shoulders.

For a moment Gwen just stares at her dumbly, unable to make such a promise to her friend when she was in fact in the process of doing the exact opposite of taking care of herself. She recovers quickly though.

"Okay." She is very careful not to promise.

"Promise me." Mary Jane is persistent.

"Yes! Okay, I will." Gwen refuses to utter the words 'I promise'. Not when they would be nothing but a lie coming from her in this situation.

M.J. seems satisfied with her answer though, which makes Gwen feel the tiniest bit relieved.

She leaves the three of them and waves as she walks towards the elevator. "See you guys later."

_Later._ She always hated the phrase 'see you later'. It was so indefinite. Did they mean later as in a few days or later as in a few decades? Later could mean anywhere between no time at all and forever. She needed a more exact frame of time like, _next week_, _next month_, or even the slightly vague but still better than later, _soon_. But she didn't know when she would see them again, or even _if_ she would see them again.

Which is exactly why she said she'd see them later.

She hails a cab outside of the hospital, flagging one down relatively quickly.

"Where to, miss?" The driver asks.

A giant lump has suddenly formed in her throat. She rethinks the plan for a second, questioning if she really should go through with it, or if she should just give the driver her home address and go home safely to her family.

She clears her throat. "Oscorp Tower."

* * *

**A/N:** Okay, just to clarify I realize the full extent of the cheesiness of Peter's miraculous recovery from falling off of one of the tallest buildings in the city, but hey, the kid does have superpowers, and while he definitely isn't immortal, he could somehow make a slow and steady recovery, right? Anyway, sorry if that felt majorly unrealistic, but there's no way I was going to kill off Peter, and besides, he's going to become pretty important in the story later on. ; )


	3. Hide and Seek

**A/N: **So I guess that I'm pretty content with the way this chapter came out. It's a little longer than I'd anticipated it to be, but it's the first bit of Curt/Gwen interaction that we get so I really wanted to get it right. It's also my first attempt at writing from Curt/The Lizard's POV, so I hope I've done a decent job of that as well. Without further delay, here's chapter 3!

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Spider-man or any of its characters.

* * *

She doesn't tell the cab driver her real destination of course. So what she really gives him is the address for the Subway about a block away from the tower where she'd always pick up lunch during her breaks at work. She'd seen enough of the news coverage to know that the area surrounding Oscorp had been sealed off to the general public, but this wouldn't stop her.

The cab drops her off at the address she'd given him, which she then proceeds to walk the remaining block towards the tower. (This of course, being after she'd went into Subway and gotten her favorite ham and Swiss sandwich, she had, after all, skipped breakfast and if she was going to die at least she wouldn't die hungry.)

Thankfully there is no police barricade shielding the tower, or anyone near the vicinity at all for that matter.

There it stands, tall and gleaming, so high the rooftop seemed to disappear into the clouds themselves, like the mythical Tower of Babel, a monument to the greed and excess of mankind.

The only thing standing in her way was a puny strip of yellow caution tape, which she proceeds to rip away immediately when she's gotten up to the door.

She punches in the security code for the main doors, and for a moment she's afraid he's shut down the power grid or that maybe he's changed the passwords on the security lock to ensure that no one can get in, but when she punches the regular code into the lock, the password is accepted and the door to the building unlocks.

The lobby is still the same, and yet entirely different at the same time. It had never been so empty before, the lobby and the entire building itself usually buzzing with life. The hustle and bustle of humanity that was typically present was now replaced by a dull silence and the sound of Gwen's boots clicking against the white tile floors when she walked. What still remained were the gleaming black and white surfaces of the floor and walls, but the lights that remained where dimmer than usual. She realizes then that the building must now be running on the back-up generator, therefore was using less power in order to conserve energy for a longer period of time.

In this massive tower that has 108 floors occupying it, she doesn't have the first clue where to look for her father. But she knows where to start.

The escalators leading up to the second floor are no longer running, a feeling of dread coming over her when she thinks of the possibility that the elevators might be out as well. She presses the button for the elevator, and thanks God that it seems to be working because she was not looking forward to the possibility of walking up the stairs to the 50th floor of the building.

The DNA laboratory was nearly the same as it was when she had left it last night, and for the most part the same as it had always been in the time she'd served working at Oscorp. No one would be able to tell that just the night before she'd come face to face with the Lizard and for a moment thought he might tear her to pieces.

The lights are dimmer on this floor as well, only necessary lighting being used to illuminate the room, which gave it a short of foreboding, ominous feel.

She makes her way through the floor that had been her primary work station, a series of glass walls surrounding the area, white numbers labeled on each door to show the primary function of the station. In room three for example held the bioreactor chemical mixer, the place she'd just been the night before preparing the antidote under Peter's instructions.

From the corner of her eye she can also see the utility closet where she'd hidden with the Ganali device from the Lizard, where she hadn't so much as breathed for fear of being heard and fearing that every second she stood in that closet could have perhaps very well have been her last.

Behind a glass wall sat Curt's office, seemingly unoccupied. The lighting within it was dim, but there was just enough to light up the area. She walks in, oddly still feeling as if she's somehow invading his privacy when that was obviously irrelevant now. The feeling of being watched that she'd felt the moment she'd walked into Oscorp seems to intensify in her former mentor's office, but she dismisses it and tells herself that she's simply being paranoid.

His desk if littered with papers, as it had always been whenever she'd come across it. Curiosity overwhelms her for a bit, but as some semblance of her still felt the strange need to preserve his privacy, she leaves the documents untouched. She hadn't been there to dig up any information or incriminating evidence anyway. Her only mission was to find her father, and she didn't have time to allow herself to become distracted with anything else.

There is a family photo sitting on a table behind his desk. The frame is gold, or perhaps imitation gold, she can't really tell, and the frame holds a picture of Curt with his wife and son. Billy Connors was a child of about eight, who had his father's blond hair and green eyes. Curt's wife, Martha, was almost exotic looking with slightly tanned skin and long dark curls, basically the exact opposite of Gwen.

It's an odd feeling in a way, looking in on them at a point where they had been so content in their lives. Almost as odd, Gwen realizes, as the fact that for some reason she had just compared herself to Curt's wife.

She sets the frame down delicately, realizing that she isn't about to find any clues or information in Curt's office that could possibly lead her to which part of the building he was keeping her father in. The fact was she had been biding her time by treading in old territory where she was aware of her surroundings. It had been almost something akin to nostalgia that had brought her back to her old station, the place where she'd worked for so long. But even standing in the middle of it all, the massive DNA laboratory that hadn't really changed at all since she'd left it last night, it would never be what it had been for her before. Would never quite hold the same comfort or security that it had to offer her in the past, not when it had been the place where she'd confronted the Lizard alone, when for a moment she'd been so certain it would be the place she would die.

"Dad!" She calls out into the empty laboratory, the large space so empty that he voice nearly echoes. She is greeted by nothing but the sound of silence, her seclusion on this floor becoming more apparent to her. There was no point in trying to be silent. If she was there, then Curt would surely know by now that she was here, silence or not.

And the constant presence she was feeling while going through the building was probably no coincidence either.

She convinces herself that she has nothing to fear from him. He wouldn't hurt her, as he had no reason and that she was no threat to him.

Not that he knew of anyway.

* * *

He knows she's there before he even hears her speak.

He's in the bioreactor room arranging some of the components of the reptilian serum when he feels it. She must still be at least fifty floors below him and at first he dismisses it as wishful thinking, but he swears that even while she's still so far below that he can actually _feel_ her.

Her scent that had hung so thick in the air the night before was growing more present again, and if he is completely still he swears he can hear the sound of her heels clicking against the tiles in the lobby.

Impossible, he thinks. This was obviously some contributing part of madness that the serum had somewhat plagued him with, there was surely no way he could hear her come in through the main doors from the 50th floor, could he?

But the he hears something else, _the elevator_. One of a few in the building but he can hear the gears of machinery twist and turn as the vessel slides onto it's decent to the main floor of the tower.

A cunning smile spreads across his reptilian mouth. _He wasn't imagining it. She was there. _

A few seconds pass when he can hear the elevator re-ascending on its track, heading straight for the DNA laboratory. He couldn't say how he knew for sure, but he had a pretty good feeling that she was headed for this floor in particular.

Knowing she's headed straight towards him, he decides to take refuge in a nearby supply closet, the small space being slightly cramped, especially given his current state. The same closet, in fact, that she had just previously been hiding from him the night before with the Ganali device.

He smirks, _oh the irony._

It was a ridiculous notion of course, the idea of him hiding from her, a nine-foot-tall reptile hiding himself from a fragile young girl. But he doesn't want her to be aware of him just yet. No, he would take his time with this; draw out the hunt before he decided to pounce. He was not hiding, he was simply lying in wait.

He sees her step out of the elevator, the clicking sounds of her heels on the floor so intense they may as well have been amplified. He's bombarded with her scent, just as potent as it had been last night.

All at once she is everywhere, enveloping him, surrounding him. A series of thoughts invade his mind, thoughts he has no business having especially considering the two of them weren't even of the same species at the moment.

Her steps are slow, precise, as if she doesn't want to be heard or have her presence be known to anyone who could be listening.

_You can't hide from me little girl, but you must know that by now, don't you? _

There's a moment when she sets her gaze on the utility closet, her blue eyes nearly locking with his gold ones. Although he's sure she can't see him through the slits in the door, because when he stares back at her, her face simple remains impassive.

She looks away from the closet and he can hear her footsteps retreating in the other direction, headed to the part of the lab where his office is located.

He can still see her through the slits in the door, as she opens the glass doors and enters his office.

_It's not nice to snoop, _he thinks darkly. Debating on whether he should make himself known to her now before she starts to dig through anything.

But she doesn't look through anything, doesn't even attempt to touch or rifle through any of the papers that he'd left on his desk. Doesn't open any of the drawers or go through any of the dozens of books that cover the bookshelf behind the desk.

She simply wanders through it with the mild curiosity and wonder of a child in a museum that has been warned that they could simply look but not touch anything.

_Look, don't touch._ Staring at Gwen from a distance, this taunting phrase seems to apply to him more at the moment than he'd care to admit.

He sees her walk towards the table behind his desk, her back facing him. She lifts up the framed photo off of him with Martha and Billy, simply studying it for a few seconds before setting it down and leaving his office.

Then she's there again, her fragrance just as overwhelming as before; her mere presence a force strong enough to unnerve even the likes of him, supposedly the highest predator on the food chain. Although he dismisses these emotions and refuses to admit that her being there was having any effect on him whatsoever.

_Don't fool yourself, Connors. We both know how easily she gets you rattled. No use lying, I know you better than you know yourself. _The Lizard whispers mockingly within his mind, the presence of his supplementary personality becoming more dominant whenever he's on the serum.

"Dad!" She calls out to the supposedly empty lab, a hint of desperation in her voice.

_Ah, she speaks. _Of course she'd been there for her father, he thinks as he realizes that the Captain was probably still unconscious exactly where he'd left him from the night before. In the end he was still glad he'd spared George Stacy. He couldn't imagine that Gwen would be very pleased with him if he hadn't. Much to his great fortune, keeping him at the tower had brought Gwen here to rush to his aid, and he couldn't think of a greater reward than that.

She stands there for a few more moments, as if contemplating her next more. Her father was someone in this massive building that had 108 floors and even more rooms. He almost feels sorry for her, the chances of her finding him in the building were slim to none.

Still, she turns on her heel, headed towards her next destination in search for her father, wherever that may be.

_Don't let her get away. _

She's almost to the elevator, her small form moving farther and farther away from him.

_She's right there, stop her. _The Lizard was relentless, the whispers growing louder and angrier with every step she takes away from him.

Her finger is poised over the button for the elevator when the sound of the utility closet door being ripped off of its hinges sounds through the air.

He stands at his full height as he approaches her, his steps slow but deliberate. A predatory smirk spreads across his face as he drinks in her look of sheer disbelief.

"_Gwen."_

* * *

Just as she's about to hit the button a loud tearing sounds from behind her and rings through her ears. The loud noise disturbing the heavy silence she'd started to become so accustomed to causing her to jump.

When she turns to face the sound, she can hardly believe what she sees. The Lizard emerges from the utility closet. Yes, the same closet where she'd hidden herself from him the night before and begins to approach her.

"_Gwen."_ He practically purrs, saying her name in almost the same way he'd said it in the halls of Midtown Science after she'd smashed him over the heard with a trophy.

She hits the button to summon the elevator viciously as he approaches her, praying that maybe it'll make it up to her before he can get to her.

_C'mon…C'mon._

Before the elevator even makes it she feels his hand, (yes his hand, _singular_) encircle her waist, picking her up and throwing her away from the elevator doors. She hits the ground rolling, but with minimal damage as she reasons that he must've been trying to get her away from the doors rather than hurt her.

But while she's kneeling on the floor she's reaching for the Swiss army knife in her coat pocket, her hand seeking out the cold metal.

He's walking towards her again, purposely, almost arrogantly even. The cat who'd caught the canary, the lion about to pounce on the unsuspecting gazelle.

She finds the knife quickly, pulling the knife out of the hilt with slight difficulty being she's doing it one handed.

He's right in front of her now, practically looming over her much smaller form on the floor.

She swallows, still almost too mortified by his sudden presence to even speak. "Where's my father?"

He stares down at her, the perpetual smirk never once leaving his inhuman face. "He's doing quite well actually," he replies confidently, in that low, warped version of her former mentor's voice, partially avoiding her question.

He leans in closer, his face probably only inches away from hers; the look on his face assuring that he wants his next words to cut deep. "And how is Peter?"

Needless to say, they do.

It is only a second that passes between them before she's drawn the knife out of her pocket. Using his proximity to her advantage, she plunges the blade into his eye socket hilt deep, effectively wiping that irritating smirk right off his face.

He cries out in agony immediately after, holding a clawed hand up to the eye that still held her father's knife stabbed into it since she hadn't bothered to pull it out. She scrambles away as quickly as she possibly can, seeing this as her only opening for escape.

She moves fast, but as usual he's faster.

His claw clutches her waist again, but instead of throwing her aside as he had before she feels her body make sharp contact with the hard floor as he presses her hard against it, all thoughts of not wanting to cause her any harm clearly having left him now that she'd just impaled his eye with a knife.

He's kneeling over her again, and she can see that he's already pulled the knife out of his eye. Blood covers the right side of his face, but as far as she can she the eye she'd just stabbed has already repaired itself and appears to be fully healed. She'd expected that it would, but it angers her all the same.

He's staring down at her with a look of disappointment and borderline contempt, his breath coming out in angry huffs.

The claw that holds her down grips her tightly, leaving no room for her to escape or for any other chance to attack him. He must know better now, she wasn't as harmless as he'd hoped her to be. Being that he was only gripping her waist, she still had the full use of her arms and legs. Although he'd thrown her against the floor so hard most of her body was overcome with an aching pain, which in turn had been contributing to the exhaustion she was suffering from the sleepless night she'd had before.

She may as well have been paralyzed.

She doesn't cry, nor would she give him the satisfaction of begging him to spare her life. He'd been generous up until now, but she could tell by his menacing expression that his patience had run out.

Last night when she'd been hiding from him she was sure in that moment she knew what it was to be on the edge of death, to know that one wrong move could be the difference in surviving or being killed. She'd been wrong, she hadn't even been anywhere near death then. Only now, lying prone on the floor in the hands of a monster, did she truly know what it was to stare into the face of death. It must have been something like what Peter had felt when he'd fallen from the tower, when he realized there was nothing left to do but wait for the inevitable moment when he hit the ground.

But Gwen was not Peter, and she surely wouldn't come out alive on the other side.

There was nothing left to do but to await her imminent fate.

He inches in closer to her, his hand still holding her against the floor. He's closer now to her than he has ever been before in this form, and although his proximity hardly fazes her anymore, she has to turn her head away from him instinctively, shutting her eyes tightly as if anticipating the impact before a car crash.

He takes advantage of the position of her turned head, breathing in the scent of her, his hot breath tickling the skin of her neck. His tongue darts out to her collarbone, making a slow, agonizing trail all the way up to her cheek, as if to savor the taste of her skin.

She tries to hold back the shudder that goes through her body, hoping that he's unable to feel it.

There is movement to her right, and for a moment she thinks that she may be seeing things. But no, there is someone else in the room with them, standing in the corner too far away for her to identify, the figure approaches them slowly, something dark in their hands.

Two shots fire out in the lab, both bullets hitting the side of the Lizard's head. There is even more blood than before, so much that Gwen swears she can practically smell it.

"Get the hell away from her, you son of a bitch."

Captain George Stacy stands at the other end of the lab, his standard issue firearm still pointed at the Lizard, ready to fire again.

The hand around Gwen's waist releases her, the Lizard now turning his attention to what had surely been perceived as the latest threat. She is elated and terrified at the same time. Her father was there, alive, and appearing to be essentially unharmed.

But the Lizard's vengeful gaze was now fixed on him and he may not live for long.

The Lizard advances on him, so quickly that George only has time to fire off one more shot before he knocks the gun from his hands and has him pinned to the wall with one of his claws, the other one that isn't holding him raised with its claws extended, poised to strike at any moment.

"Curt! Don't!" Gwen screams, desperate to get through to him somehow. Knowing that if she can't then he'd strike her father down in a second. She stands up from where she was on the floor, the burst of nervous adrenaline giving her the courage to actually stand up and face the monster who'd had her pinned to the floor barely a minute ago.

He turns his head towards her, letting her know that she is once again the center of his complete focus. His face which had been so full of disdain moments ago, was now almost passive, with just the smallest hint of irritation.

"Curt please don't hurt him…" Her voice is broken, and tears have fogged her vision; any plans of not begging or groveling in front of him falling though the moment he'd threatened her father's life.

His expression gives nothing away at first, golden eyes staring overly attentive into hers, completely devoid of any humanity whatsoever.

But there is the slightest change that almost slips past undetectable, a sort of softness that creeps over his features that is so subtle that for a second she thinks that she might be imagining it. Somehow she knows that she hasn't though, and the optimist in her has her convinced that she's actually gotten though to him.

The Lizard releases her father, who drops hard to the floor. George stares up at him angrily anticipating what the monster in front of him might do next, but the Lizard's focus was no longer on the Captain.

He makes his way over to where Gwen kneels on the floor, head in her hands while tears still stained her cheeks.

Without his gun that had been knocked across the room when the Lizard had disarmed him, all George could do was stare in pure contempt as the creature made his way over to his daughter.

She's almost startled to see him so close again, kneeling in front of her in an attempt to get closer to her level.

From what she can make out of his expression, he appears to be almost forlorn, perhaps even guilty that he'd been the cause of her tears.

There's even a moment when he reaches out to her with one of his clawed hands, raising it towards her face as if to catch her falling tears, but he seems to think better of the decision and the hand recoils before it touches her.

"Please, just let him go." She says, having to use all her willpower to keep her voice steady. In that moment, it was all she wanted, for her father to go home safe. For her mother not to have to sleep alone in their bed at night, for her younger brothers not to have to face growing up without a father.

In that moment it was all she wanted from him, all that she'd ask of him. Just this one thing, surely he could give her this after all he'd done.

His face has turned contemplative, as if he's actually putting consideration into her request.

She's sure she can guess the central question that was currently surrounding his inner conflict.

_But what would he get in return? _

After what had been at least over a minute of sitting in silence as he'd seemed to be deep in thought, he clears his throat in such an almost human way that in any other context it would've been comical.

"Alright." Was his answer, although she knew it couldn't be this simple.

Everything came at a price, she may have been young but she wasn't a fool.

His eyes turn sadistic again, giving her the same look as he had right before he'd mentioned Peter's name.

"But you'll stay." It isn't a suggestion. It is an irrefutable fact and an option he's already assured himself is the only choice she has in the matter.

She answers him without missing a beat, already knowing her answer the moment he's finished his sentence. "Fine, I don't care. Just let him go and don't hurt him." Despite the feeling of false confidence she has convinced herself of having, her voice still comes out unsteady.

"Gwen, no!" George has risen from where he'd been sitting across the lab, quickly making his way to his daughter and placing himself between Gwen and the Lizard, as if attempting to shield her from him.

George wraps his arms tightly around Gwen, making it clear he had no intention of leaving his daughter here alone with this monster. He'd have to drag him out kicking and screaming, which Gwen realizes is what it will inevitably come to. She returns her dad's embrace, feeling even closer to a breakdown now that she's in her father's arms.

The Lizard takes no note or interest in the fact that he has just stepped between them, as she looks over her father's shoulder and sees his reptilian eyes still focused on her, his gaze never wavering from hers. She buries her head in her father's shoulder, trying her best to hide from the Lizard's predatory gaze. Pointless, she knew, as it was a gaze she would not be able to escape for long.

"Dad, you have to go." She whispers against her dad's shoulder, so quietly she wonders at first if he'd even heard her.

He clearly had, because his response is immediate. "There's no way in hell I'm leaving you here. You go with me or I don't go at all."

She pulls out of the embrace slightly, just enough to look into his face. "You have to leave. Mom, the boys, the city, they need you. I'll be fine, trust me."

She asks for his trust, and just as it had been with Simon and with M.J. at the hospital, she still couldn't make any promises when it came to her well being.

This wouldn't save her family from heartache, or help them along as well as she'd hoped it would. She was just trading one life for another. Either Helen would lose her husband or her only daughter. Her brothers would either lose their father or their older sister. No matter what happened, the Stacys would suffer a loss either way.

They needed George though; a husband, a father. Without her, they could get along just fine, but not without her father. It would hurt them at first, she knew, but the pain would pass.

"You're talking crazy Gwen, the family needs you just as much as they need me. I'm not going to –."

Her father is cut off mid sentence as she feels herself being extracted from his hold, or rather, she should say, as he was being taken out of the lab.

As he was being taken away. She had come here to save him, only to have him ripped away from her.

The Lizard had lifted George off the floor, the police captain struggling in his hold as she watches the Lizard carry her father out of the lab and haul him away.

"_Gwen_, GWEN!" George is frantic, trying with no avail to escape the clutches of the creature taking him away from his daughter, all the while kicking and screaming just as Gwen had predicted he would. "I'll come back for you! I won't leave you here!"

"Dad, I love you! Tell Mom I'm sorry!" she half shouts through her sobs, the sight of her father being carried away having been the last of what she could handle.

The lab is nearly silent when they leave, with nothing but the sound of her own crying to keep her company. Any semblance of composure was lost to her now, she had officially crumbled.

When her crying has subsided and her tears start to fall silently, another silence fills the room. Not like the one that had been there earlier, when she wandered around looking for her father and when she'd thought she'd been alone on this floor, when really all along the Lizard had been watching her.

This silence was not the same, because she knew now that she was never truly alone here. The silence that filled the walls of this tower was only meant to deceive her.

But she would try to take some sort of solace in her quiet solitude, because for the moment, she was alone.

For now.

* * *

**A/N:** Well I bet no one saw that twist coming from a mile away! (jk, it was pretty obvious) but just because I decided to bust out the trope as old as time (hehe get it?) this won't be a Spider-man retelling of Beauty and the Beast. The only allusions there will really be to it are the plot twist in this chapter and possibly another element of the story added in during a later chapter. Oh and also, the part at the beginning when Gwen is comparing Oscorp Tower to the Tower of Babel is a reference to a comment Marc Webb made during a BTS interview on _The Amazing Spider-man_ dvd, when they were doing a featurette on Oscorp.


	4. One in the Same

**Disclaimer: I don't own Spider-man or any of its characters. **

* * *

The Captain doesn't relent in his struggle to escape his hold, kicking, screaming, and shouting obscenities from the 50th floor all the way down to the main floor of the tower.

He tosses him out onto the street, trying his hardest not to damage him too badly in the process. He hadn't made any verbal promise to Gwen not to hurt her father, but however unspoken it may have been he was going to honor it all the same.

George is on his feet almost immediately after the Lizard tosses him on the front steps, running up to the doors that had already been locked in front of him, pounding on them with his fists to no avail.

With the combination of his heightened sense of hearing and the fact that George is shouting, he can still hear him even through the sealed doors. "You won't get away with this! I'll be back, and I'll have the NYPD, the FBI, and the fucking National Guard breaking down these doors with me! You can't hide behind these walls forever, because sooner or later I'm coming for you. You touch one hair on my daughter's head and I will _fucking_ _end you_, slowly and painfully."

He makes his way away from the door, unfazed by the Captain's threats, threats he was sure he meant, but he remained unshaken by them still, the shouting and the sounds of his fists pounding against the door growing fainter the farther he walks.

The shift always comes without warning. The moment where the serum begins to fade, and he starts to regress back to his human form. He's been arranging the components of it, uping the dosage he takes each time, always with the hope that somehow he will have perfected the serum to the point where the transformation would be permanent.

It never was.

It had begun lasting for longer periods of time, the longest record of it lasting having been for just a little under twenty four hours, but never longer than that. Perhaps, he sometimes thought in his moments of weakness, that he'd simply have to accept the inevitability that it simply wasn't meant to be. That if he had to work so hard to maintain these new abilities and this new form then maybe he wasn't meant to have them. That no matter what scientific breakthroughs he would generate, God would somehow always intervene. These moments of self-pity never lasted long, as soon as he'd snap out of them it was usually back to the drawing board, where he'd alter a certain element of the serum, adding more of a certain chemical or balancing the components in just a way that perhaps someday he'd finally get it right.

This, however, was yet to be achieved.

Maybe he couldn't fix the human race. That dream, he realized, was truly dead. But he sure as hell hadn't given up on fixing himself.

The rate of regression was much slower now than it had been at first, the transformation back to his human form not happening all at once but at a more gradual pace. He feels the shifting of his bone structure, his stature returning to his original height, making him just a bit over six feet rather than what he was before at nine.

One thing, he'd noticed lately, with slight enthusiasm, was that his right arm didn't disintegrate instantly anymore when the serum started to fade. The more he'd started to tweak the serum and up the dosage, the longer it stayed.

His left arm had returned to its original appearance, but his right arm remained clad in scales, tiny patches of human flesh peaking out from beneath the reptilian skin; the right arm a reminder of what his wonderful serum could give him, but inevitably, what he'd always wind up losing in the end.

As his reptilian façade begins to fade, his mind wanders to Gwen, and the state she'd been in when he'd dragged her father out and left her alone in the lab.

With the serum beginning to fade his inner voice had thankfully been silenced for the moment, because if the Lizard was able to have any say in the matter he'd obviously be telling him to go to her.

Connors could never guess what it was with the other side of himself, if the Lizard really was a part of him or was just a different side of him completely, if it was parallel version of himself or a completely alternative personality altogether. He'd eventually arrived at the conclusion that they were simply two sides of the same coin. Two entities that mirrored the other, both working together to form one being.

But the Lizard had no sympathy for humans, had no compassion for the weak or the downtrodden. The Lizard did not feel exactly as he felt, and he certainly didn't love what he loved.

It was as if though, that certain things that Connors felt the Lizard's feelings for them were intensified ten fold. Connors's want for his missing limb growing into a god complex to 'save' the human race and turn them all into what they surely had perceived as monsters, his mild annoyance with Parker's interference in his plans bordering on the edge of loathing.

The fascination he'd felt towards Gwen transforming into full-fledged obsession.

The Lizard did not feel much, but whenever his feelings were concerned, they almost always pertained to her.

And he never let Connors forget it.

He knows that he should leave her alone. He'd just basically lured her to the tower using her father as bait, only to announce to her that she'd have to take his place while ripping away everything that mattered to her all at once.

He knew that she probably thought he'd tried to kill Peter, that he'd knocked him off the tower somehow, sending him to what surely could've been his death. But he'd heard the reports of the boy's health, and he knew now for a fact that Peter would fully recover from his injuries. He was glad for it too. Connors had never wanted to hurt him, had even tried his best to save him from falling off the tower. He'd never intended to kill him, certainly not Richard and Mary's boy, never the only son of two of his dearest friends, friends that were long gone a long time ago, but friends to him all the same.

His intention hadn't been to lure her there really. Circumstances had just seemed to be in his favor. Although he'd kept George here for fear of him alerting the rest of the NYPD and sending them down to the tower to collect him and have him locked up, he hadn't actually kept him there with the thought in mind that Gwen would actually come to the tower in an attempt to save him. The idea wasn't even a thought he'd entertained in the back of his mind. He'd seen her face when she'd looked at him the night before, the look of sheer terror before he'd opened the utility closet door and took the Ganali device from her. She'd been terrified of him, so needless to say he'd never thought she'd go out of her way to come face to face with him again after that encounter.

But there she'd been, not even twenty-four hours after the incident going through Oscorp Tower, on the 50th floor where she'd last ran into him no less, even daring to enter his office, where the lights had been on, clearly being a signal to someone's recent presence.

He touches his fingers to his right eye, the one she'd impaled so mercilessly when he'd spoke Peter's name in the lab. It had healed almost immediately upon removing the knife of course, some dry blood still present below his eye, a bit of it having seeped onto his cheek.

He smirks to himself, wondering when exactly it was his little kitten had grown such claws.

Despite having the prior knowledge that she'd most likely confront him again, she'd still come to the tower, setting her own fears and concerns for her own welfare aside, her only wish having been to save her father and get him out of this place.

And she'd paid the ultimate price.

Why he'd decided to have her stay here with him was almost baffling even to himself. The Lizard knew why certainly, as he'd essentially been the one to make the decision, but his thoughts where Gwen was concerned were becoming unpleasant to him and he'd begun to block a lot of them out for the most part. What disturbs him the most is how these thoughts don't really strike him as unpleasant at all, how he'd even begun to indulge in them once in a while, thoughts he'd blocked out so easily before that had now been rising to the surface of his mind in full force now with the Lizard being such a prominent presence in his subconscious.

He won't delude himself into thinking that these thoughts were the product of the Lizard and that they had just made themselves present now. They'd always been there, but locked securely away, rarely ever breaking away to the surface. Always hidden, but still always there, hidden deep inside.

They were not so concealed now. The Lizard had seen to that, plaguing his mind with his incessant whispering and thoughts and feelings that the creature had no business feeling in the first place.

Connors is almost endeared to her at this point, Gwen having been so brave as to face him here on her own when not even the NYPD would dare to come here and confront him. Risking her own life for her father's and even essentially giving her life for his in the end.

He could avoid her no longer, Connors's concern for her and the Lizard's desire both conspiring as one to create an unstoppable need for her presence which refused to be ignored. With the serum fading, he can no longer hear her with a fifty floor distance between them. But he swears that her scent had still clung to him from their close proximity earlier, and he's sure he isn't imagining it when he thinks he can still taste the skin of her neck on his tongue.

If she only knew. In this tower, Connors and even the Lizard posed no threat to her, but she would surely wind up being the death of him.

* * *

_1 year and five months earlier._

The Stacys seat themselves around the dinner table for their nightly supper, or what would be more appropriately titled as another one of Helen's many culinary experiments that could either go very well or very wrong.

Before she'd met George, Helen had went to culinary school in the hopes of perhaps making it as a professional chef in one of Manhattan's upscale restaurants that would charge their customers twenty dollars for a piece of sushi.

Her latest cooking venture came in the form of what she referred to as branzino; which was, more or less and in all appearance, essentially a basic garden variety fish, lying there on her plate still fully assembled in all its scaly glory, staring up at her with a passive expression.

Gwen was no vegetarian, but she typically preferred her food not to have a face when she cut into it.

Helen's clears her throat as she cuts into the branzino on her plate. "So kids, how was your day?"

Dinner was always this way, Helen creating these elaborate dishes to serve to her family, the family then proceeding to assemble themselves around the dinner table to discuss the events of the day.

Most people her age would find this extremely tedious, but despite the routine of it all Gwen took comfort in the fact that her family would always have dinner together at the same time every night, sharing with each other the events of their day.

The stories her younger brothers told would range from mildly interesting to slightly mundane, especially when it came to Simon and Howard. Their optimism and youth causing them to find wonder and amazement in the smallest things that Gwen and Phillip, who was only a year younger than her, might not find all that interesting. But she still listened to them all the same, nearly hanging on their every word as they recollected the events of school that day.

There had apparently been a fire drill at school today, a story which both the boys share, being that they attended the same school and were a mere two years apart in age, each of them inserting their own commentary into the other's story, something that always irks the one telling the story, which causes Gwen to sport an uncontrollable smile.

When Simon and Howard are finished sharing their separate but yet nearly similar stories that practically mirrored the other's, Gwen thinks that perhaps it's her time to have the floor.

"I got promoted at work today."

"At your _unpaid_ internship?" Phillip puts in teasingly.

Helen shoots him a glare, causing her oldest son to put up his hands in mock surrender. "Don't listen to him Gwen. You've only been there a few months and you've already been promoted, that's great."

"What's your new title exactly?" George asks, never being one to pass up the opportunity to throw in his two cents.

"I'm the head intern, which basically just means more responsibility and possibly longer hours, but they've been really flexible as far as planning my schedule so it doesn't interfere with my schoolwork so I'm not too worried about it. This also, I guess technically makes me Connors's assistant. I'm pretty much working directly beneath him from now on."

Phillip nearly spits out his drink as he's taking a swig of water, attempting to conceal the fit of laughter while simultaneously trying not to choke on his drink.

This time Gwen, Helen, and George all glare at him collectively, which doesn't help because his laughter still doesn't cease.

Simon and Howard simply exchange puzzled looks, the cause of their brother's sudden fit of laugher a complete mystery to both of them.

"You're disgusting." Gwen says, although she has to admit now that she reviews the sentence in her mind it had come out a bit more wrong than she'd intended, having to bite down hard on her lower lip to prevent herself from laughing when she'd realized what she'd said.

Phillip has collected himself at last, whipping away what could've been laughter induced tears, or perhaps he'd just been doing it for effect. "Hey, your words not mine. Oh, and I'm assuming this new position of yours doesn't come with a pay raise?"

Her fifteen-year-old brother's mind seemed so far in the gutter lately that she's almost surprised that he didn't emphasize the word position.

"No. No it does not."

"Hm, you'd think taking up the position as a mad scientist's assistant would earn you some sort of pay."

Gwen stares at Phillip with a baffled expression. Since when had he thought that Connors had warranted the nickname of a 'mad scientist'? She rarely even divulged much information when it came to the details of Curt's work, this being, somewhat, because they'd rarely asked. "And where exactly did _that_ come from?"

"I googled the guy. He wrote this book that basically revolves entirely around turning humans into reptiles, fish, and stuff like that. He's a total crackpot."

Gwen rolls her eyes. "Stalker."

Simon looks up from his plate with a concerned and somewhat panicked look on his face. "He wants to turn _people_ into _fish_?"

Gwen gives her little brother a comforting pat on his blond head. "No, Simon. He doesn't want to turn us into fish. Phillip just has no idea what he's talking about."

"Oh, well if I'm so wrong about his goals in life, please Gwen, enlighten us. What sort of research exactly does he specialize in?" Phillip asks.

"His primary field of research is Herpetology, or in lay terms, the study of reptiles. But in more recent years he's broadened his research to cross-species genetics." She realizes that by enclosing this information to her family that she'd just given Phillip even more ammunition than what he'd had to work with before. But for some reason she feels the need to defend her mentor's work, especially given the fact that he clearly wasn't present at the moment and unable to defend it himself.

"You hear that guys? Cross species genetics? Reptiles? Doesn't that kind of support basically everything I was saying about the guy earlier?"

"No, it doesn't. He does _not_ want to turn people into animals, that isn't what cross-species genetics is. He just wants to apply certain genes from certain species to humans, certain genes that could say, I don't know, regenerate missing limbs, cure Alzheimer's? Things I guess from your point of view that only a crackpot could accomplish, is that right Phillip?"

Phillip looks to be slightly taken aback. "Geez, defensive much?"

"You have to kind of admit though Gwen, don't some of his theories seem, a bit, I don't know, unorthodox?" George asks, the question causing Gwen to feel a bit of disappointment at her father's narrow mindedness.

"I think he's brilliant."

"Someone's hot for teacher." Phillip quips.

"He's my _mentor_, actually." She shoots back.

"You still didn't deny that you're hot for him."

Gwen's cheeks suddenly turn a deep crimson, when she realizes that she hadn't.

* * *

He arrives at the 50th floor, still able to feel her presence despite the serum having faded a bit.

She's no where to be seen at first, which unnerves him a bit, something he knows is completely irrational, because he knows she's here and honestly where the hell would she go in the first place?

He finds her sitting underneath one of the lab station tables, her back facing in his direction.

He approaches her quietly as not to startle her, but surely she'd heard to elevator arrive and still she had given no response or indication that she was aware of his being here.

When he's less than ten feet from her, she is still in the same position as before, seated on the floor with her back facing him, her side seeming to be resting against the wall.

He kneels down beside Gwen on the floor, still receiving no reaction or acknowledgment from her. As he reaches out to her, he realizes that it all may just be a ploy for him to lower his guard in order for her to gain the opportunity to attack him again. But he convinces himself that he can handle whatever she plans to throw at him, and he decides to take his chances anyway.

He reaches for her with his right hand, the one that was still clawed and clad in scales. The hand makes contact with her shoulder, fingers brushing the material of her beige jacket.

But still, she doesn't react even when he touches her. Doesn't even stir or emit even the smallest sound. There is only the sound or her shallow, steady breaths.

She was asleep. She'd fallen asleep on the floor underneath a lab station, she must've been exhausted.

For a moment he wonders if he should shake her a bit, or make some attempt to rouse her from sleep, but he thinks better of it and decides against the idea. Even if she did wake up, how would she react to seeing him now? What would he even say to her? Different scenarios run through his mind, a majority of them ending with her once again stabbing a sharp object into his eye, her knowing full well that since he was basically human again, it would not heal.

Instead he does something that he has never done before, something that before recently he would never have been able to do.

Gently, being extremely careful as not to wake her, he extracts her from underneath the table, using both his left and temporarily acquired right arm to lift her up into his arms.

She doesn't stir even once during this maneuver, leading him to further believe that she'd been in much need of sleep and seemed to be out cold. Of course she hadn't gotten any sleep the night before, he'd thought. How could she when her father hadn't come home and she wasn't sure if he was hurt or whether or not he was even still alive?

A sharp pang of guilt rushes over Connors, a guilt that although not as intense as his own had actually been shared by his more dormant than usual reptilian counterpart. The Lizard wasn't as cruel as he'd been letting on, as Connors remembers the feelings bordering on sadness that she'd evoked in him when he'd witnessed her tears and she'd pleaded with him to spare her father.

Reptiles were cold by nature, both in the literal and the figurative sense. They did not feel, they only ever did what they saw was essential to their survival, every move careful and calculated with only logical motives behind them.

Such was not entirely the case with the Lizard, and perhaps, Connors thinks, some of his compassion had been able to influence the creature after all.

The 52nd floor of Oscorp Toward had been renovated a little over fifteen years ago and had essentially been converted to closely resemble a wing of an upscale hotel in Manhattan.

Fifteen years ago, Osborn had made the executive decision to have overnight observation on the volunteer test subjects that were being used in human trials for new vaccines, medicines, and treatments that were being funded and produced through Oscorp.

It had been most logical to Osborn, and to everyone else who'd had stake in the company, that the wing that the test subjects would stay in would be located only two floors above the DNA laboratory, being as how the vaccines and medicines that were being tested on them had been mostly sanctioned and created down below in the laboratory.

Most of the people who'd stayed at the tower a few nights for observation rarely faced any negative reactions to their treatments. But most were not all, and in human trials, there would always occasionally be negative side effects. This, he'd learned the hard way. The more word had gotten around about the side effects of the vaccines and medicines that the test subjects were experiencing, the more people had slowly stopped volunteering for the over-night observations altogether. The wing that consisted of what were practically glorified hotel rooms having been essentially vacant for what had probably been a few years now.

He enters one of the rooms, not choosing it for any specific reason, being that every single room one this floor was practically identical to the last. Each room was decently sized, all equipped with queen-sized beds that were clad in black comforters, white silk sheets covering each mattress. A modestly sized flat-screen television is poised on the nightstand facing the bed, and a bathroom was connected to each room.

_Only the best for Oscorp's lab rats,_ Connors mused to himself.

He carries her in, like a new bride being carried over a threshold, and sets her down gently on the bed, being especially careful as not to rouse her from sleep, relieved when she emits not sounds of protest or discomfort after he's set her down.

Still she sleeps peacefully, for the moment not having a care in the world. He feels a bit badly, when he realizes that she would never be so serene when she was near him ever again save for when she was asleep. Never again would she put her trust and confidence in him as she had so before, the things he'd done surely being enough to perhaps permanently damage their relationship.

Despite all the recent madness that seemed to surround him since he'd been on the serum, he hasn't deluded himself into thinking that there is anything he can do to possibly repair it, to ever make it as it had been before.

But even with the knowledge that she surely must hate him, still, he'd made her stay.

Because she'd understood, understood his work, what he'd been out to accomplish. Maybe she hadn't understood in the end, but he'd essentially set out to eradicate the human race, so really, how could he blame her?

Maybe they would never be as they were before, but it didn't matter. She'd seen him at his darkest, seen the other side of him, yet she'd still come to confront him anyway, knowing what she would face. She had seen the worst of him, and in time she would learn to accept it, because it was Gwen and she'd always understood him like no one else had. Except maybe for Richard, his long-gone former research partner, but he'd left without so much as a good-bye and after thirteen years without a word Curt had beyond given up hope of ever hearing from him or Mary at this point.

His former protégé still slumbers peacefully on the bed, making no movements or sounds save for her nearly silent breaths.

He notices, for the first time oddly, that she'd fallen asleep in her jacket and boots. The jacket couldn't have been a cause of much discomfort but surely no one was really comfortable sleeping in their shoes?

It begins as a considerate thought aimed solely at her comfort while sleeping, but he then realizes what a truly bad idea it could be to remove any article of her clothing.

_It's a pair of shoes for god's sake, what's the harm in that? _

He starts with her left leg, unzipping the tan leather boot as quietly as he can, for some strange reason somewhat scared by the thought of her waking to him taking off her shoes.

It isn't until he starts taking the other shoe off her right leg that he realizes what she's wearing underneath them.

He isn't sure why it seems to evoke such feelings from him now, they had been practically the only thing he'd seen her wear since he'd known her, those knee-high stockings that just went up past her knees and stopped right below her upper thigh. Hardly what he or what anyone else would call a provocative wardrobe choice, but in that moment after he's removed her other shoe all he can seem to think about is sinking his teeth into the pale flesh of her upper thigh.

He quickly removes himself from the room, the room which he supposed he could now refer to as hers for an indefinite period of time. He doesn't bother to lock it, he preferred not to think of her as a prisoner, although he knows that the denial of this is slightly self-indulgent.

Shame floods through him, unable to believe that just the slight exposure of her skin could stir up so many things within him, realizing that he himself was no better than the monster within who lusted after her so shamelessly.

Maybe it wasn't so hard to believe, maybe Connors was not so evolved from the Lizard as he'd like to believe. Perhaps there was a reason that most of their emotions seemed to parallel the others almost directly.

Because he was the Lizard. And the Lizard was him.

* * *

**A/N:** Okay, so a lot of internal conflict going on with Connors in this chapter, but I wanted to get a clear point across that while Connors and the Lizard are basically two parts of one being, they're very different and I hope that comes across in the way I write their POVS. (Being that chapter 3 had the Lizard's POV and in this chapter we got Connors's.)


	5. Inevitable

**A/N:** Sorry for the wait on this chapter, I know it took quite a bit longer than the others, but I promise that I haven't lost interest in this story and I have a pretty good idea of where I want this fic to go.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Spider-man or any of its characters.

* * *

There's no energy left in her by the time the tears have finally stopped. She remains seated on the hard floor of the lab, still trying to absorb the full gravity of the current predicament she had gotten herself into. Her next course of action was a complete mystery even to her. Should she make a run for it now, or should she simply stay and wait it out until her father gathered his forces?

But she couldn't run. No especially not now, not when her legs wouldn't even allow her to accomplish the simple task of standing. And she felt so exhausted, the effects of her sleep deprivation hitting her hard again now that the fleeting burst of adrenaline she'd felt earlier had left her.

No. At this point in time the option of running away was definitely out.

There was not much left of her now. Not the fight she'd possessed earlier, or the strength she'd willed herself to feel just before her father was taken away.

But she wasn't nothing, and she most certainly wasn't defeated, she realizes upon further thought. She'd essentially accomplished the very thing that she'd set out to do. And once more, she hadn't lost her life in the process. Not that her life was of much consequence to her at this point anyway, but it had to count for something, right? Her father was safe. He was going to go home to their family.

That is, if Curt's word meant anything at all, which, given the current circumstances and his current state of mental being, wasn't much.

She had to believe it though, that her father was safe. Had to cling to some sort of hope that this sacrifice of hers wasn't made in vain, that the creature that had taken over her former mentor wouldn't ruthlessly kill her father after he'd essentially promised his safety.

Although his efforts to 'fix' the human race had been severely misguided, Curt's other half didn't have a taste for blood, did it? After all, had there really been any casualties since he had succumbed to the influence of the serum?

Then she remembers. The bleachers, free track. Her and Peter, their first conversation after she'd found out about who he really was. Peter speaking to her in a distressed tone.

_If I hadn't been there, that thing, on the bridge, I think it would've killed them. _

The Williamsburg Bridge. She remembers some of the footage on the news. Vehicles suspended over the water, each hanging from the bridge, their lives literally hanging by a nearly translucent thread. A web. Peter had been the only thing standing between them and the Lizard.

The only thing standing between them and death.

So much for giving Connors the benefit of the doubt this whole time.

She makes her way over to one of the lab stations, finding a place under a desk, whether or not she was sitting beneath it in an attempt at hiding herself from him or just some internal need to seek refuge somewhere.

It wasn't to hide, this she knew. There was no hiding from _him_, after all. This she surely knew by now. But sleep was refusing to elude her any longer, and she couldn't very well fall asleep out in the open in the middle of the lab.

She rests her head against the wall, her eyelids struggling to stay open, but they wouldn't be denied rest any longer. They seem to drop by their own volition, like a weighted curtain. Images flash before her eyes. Her parents. Her brothers. Peter. MJ. Harry. Everyone she'd known. She wonders if this is what happens to people when they die.

Simon, MJ, Harry, and a comatose Peter who she'd just seen mere hours ago seemed so far away now. When MJ had embraced her and made her promise to stay safe, only for Gwen to respond with one of the most blatant lies she'd ever told in her life. Her closest friend who cared so much for her, and she'd taken her trust and thrown it back in her face.

Her mother who she'd stood outside gazing at the lights of the city with the night before seemed even further. Her mother who'd been fretting over the safety of her husband, not knowing if she or her children would ever see him again. Gwen hopes that he'd be returned to her, but it wouldn't be enough to end Helen's suffering. No, because now she'd lost her only daughter in the process.

Her father too who'd only just been there with her. _How long had he been gone for? Minutes, hours? How long had it been that she'd despaired over the indefinite loss of her freedom?_ He'd be able to return home to his family, but with him he'd carry the terrible burden of having to explain to everyone what had happened to her. Yes, even her father who was still so fresh in her memory, seemed worlds apart from her now.

And Simon. Looking back on it now she can't believe she'd been so forthcoming with him, admitting every detail to him about what she was setting out to do. Telling a nine-year-old child that she was attempting a fool's errand, something she could never accomplish and something that could've even ended up costing her life. God, how stupid could she have been? Burdening her little brother with such a huge secret, and even having the audacity to pressure him to keep it from the rest of their family. How could she have done that to poor Simon?

All this time she'd only had noble intentions behind wanting to save her father, her only wanting her family to not have to live without him. But despite the intent of her mission being honorable, she couldn't believe how incredibly selfish she'd been in the process, and how majorly she'd overlooked her own behavior up until this point.

She'd been impulsive. She'd been careless. And now she was going to end up paying for it.

She'd left home without so much as a good-bye to anyone but Simon. She'd left the hospital with the non-verbal promise to MJ that she'd take care of herself. Everyone would be just as worried for her as they had been for her father. Even if she'd meant to end her family's heartache by reuniting them with her father, it would hardly matter to them.

Not when they'd ended up losing her anyway.

The faces before her of her loved ones begin to slip away from her, her mind slowly drifting off on its own accord as she begins to lose consciousness.

It's almost too quiet for her to hear, the sound almost a gentle whisper, but as she's drifting off, she can swear the last thing she hears is the sound of Connors calling her name.

* * *

She doesn't dream. Her mind had been too exhausted to even give the effort to conjure up any as she'd slept. A fact that she's extremely grateful for, given that with everything that had happened and with the situation she currently faced, she had fallen asleep with the dread of being plagued by nightmares.

None had occurred though, her relief of this being short-lived as she wakes up to discover that she was in fact _living_ in one.

The room she finds herself in isn't completely dark, a small lamp on the nightstand emitting enough light to illuminate a portion of the room, but not so bright as to rouse her from sleep.

A room in a hotel is the first thing that comes to mind when she does a quick scan of her surroundings, the room seeming to have most of the essential amenities that she could think of. A television sat facing the bed, the superficial question of whether or not it actually has cable popping up in her mind fleetingly.

She guesses that it doesn't.

She remembers everything that had happened before she'd fallen asleep, but for a moment she can't for the life of her guess which part of Oscorp Tower she was in exactly.

And then she recalls a memory of when she was first hired there, when the new interns had gotten a tour of the lab and a few floors in addition to it. It was two floors above the DNA laboratory, the wing that Osborn had made for the test subjects that were participating in overnight observation during certain human trials. She hadn't seen much of this floor, they'd only visited it briefly, but she remembers enough of it to realize that a room on the 52nd floor was where she was currently in.

The room had no windows. A fitting quality for it to have considering that it was essentially serving as a cell. She remembers a story of one of the human trials gone wrong that had occurred over a decade ago, a story passed along tactfully that the more senior interns would tell the new ones starting out. No one would ever hear a word of this tale from Osborn or any of the other scientists that worked at Oscorp, such a thing becoming public knowledge would have had the capability to damage or even possibly destroy the company's reputation completely.

One of the test subjects began hearing voices, voices so loud and constant that no matter how hard he tried there was no way to quiet them. The scientists conducting the trial thought his situation would improve if they waited it out for a few days, gave it some time for the serum in question to be purged from his system.

His situation did not improve.

It became clear to the scientists and the test subject that the voices in his head wouldn't be silenced, no matter how long they waited, somehow a certain component of the serum had clung to his DNA like a virus and refused to let go. They even tried at one point to design an antidote that would counteract the serum, but even then the antidote had taken no effect.

Despite the efforts of Oscorp's top scientists, they could find no reprieve for this man's suffering that had been brought on by one of the serums that they themselves had concocted.

Until he leapt from the tower through the window in his room. Only unlike Peter, he hadn't been so lucky.

And for this reason, she supposed, was why there were no windows in her room, or probably any of the other rooms on this floor for that matter.

She thinks of Connors and how he'd turned himself into his own personal lab rat and how he'd essentially run a human trial on himself when he's injected himself with what he thought was the serum that would restore his right arm.

He must not have been fully aware of what it would do to him. If he had been, would he really still have taken it knowing he'd be transformed into a nine-foot-tall lizard?

Well he sure didn't seem to mind it much _now_ anyway.

She wonders what other side effects that serum of his could have. The Lizard was him, but in so many ways she knew it couldn't be him at all. Knows that her composed, soft-spoken mentor could be nothing like that beast she'd encountered in the lab last night and again this morning.

Maybe it was like having an alternate personality, maybe he was hearing voices in his head too. But even though Curt had betrayed her and her trust in so many ways, the thought of her former mentor drifting slowly into madness brought her no comfort or solace whatsoever. The idea that the serum he was taking could have side affects akin to schizophrenia just made her scared for him more than anything.

"_Gwen." _

It had been his voice, smooth as velvet, that she'd heard just before she drifted off. Not that distorted version of it that belonged to the monster that had taken over him. She'd been so close to unconsciousness that it's almost impossible to determine whether or not she'd truly heard it or if she'd simply imagined it. Maybe she'd been hearing voices too.

He must have carried her up from the lab, she thinks, unsure as to how he could've done this if her were in his human state. She's not quite able to decide how she feels about the idea of him touching her. Her boots were on the floor, her gray knee-high socks now in full view. The fact that he'd taken them off unnerves her a bit, the idea of him showing any concern toward her hospitality somehow feeling very out of place considering their current situation.

She removes her beige jacket, discarding it on the floor next to her boots. Her blond bangs cling to her forehead from the light perspiration there, being that she'd had a sweater on beneath the now unnecessary jacket that she'd been wearing.

Her options at this point were extremely limited. She debates on avoiding him at all costs, simply confining herself to this room until he'd let his guard down enough to allow her to make an attempt to escape. She could wait for her father to arrive with the NYPD, surely now that her father was free the entire New York police department storming the building wouldn't be too far off. But there was no telling when they would be there. How long would it take for them to plan a successful rescue mission? Besides, even if her father was dead set on getting her back, would the NYPD simply dismiss his idea to save her from the Lizard as a mission bordering on suicide that was surely bound to fail? Even though her father was their captain, would the rest of the NYPD simply follow his orders which could surely lead to what might be their imminent death?

And then there was Peter. Poor, damaged Peter. When would he recover? Would he come for her when he did? Exactly how angry with her would he be when he realized what she'd done?

One thing was certain, she couldn't wait for either of them to come to her. Not because she was too impatient to wait, but because the Lizard posed far more of a threat to Peter and her father than he did to her. As much as she hated to admit it, and although he was still unstable, she was almost sure that she didn't have much to fear from Connors or the Lizard at this point.

If he'd wanted her dead, well, he'd had multiple opportunities to dispose of her and she'd come out without so much as a scratch in all of the instances when they'd confronted one another.

No, he wouldn't hurt her. Of this she was now almost positive. But why? He'd been her mentor sure, but if he could basically give up his wife and child for the sake of advancing his research, then why was _she_ of all people still of any value to him? When he'd forsaken anyone and anything that had been important to him in his past life?

Of this she had no idea, but there was only one way to find out.

* * *

The door to the room had been unlocked, something that comes off less surprising to her than it should. She recognizes the hallway of the floor immediately, memories of touring this floor confirming that she was in fact on the 52nd floor of the tower. Only two floors above the DNA laboratory.

Only two floors above him.

She doesn't even know for sure that this is where he'll be, but she has a pretty good feeling and she honestly can't think of any other place he would be.

When she arrives there, the floor appears almost unoccupied, a feeling of seclusion creeping over her just as it had earlier when she'd first started her search for her father. But she wouldn't fall for it again. No matter how quiet it was or how alone she felt, she was never alone. Not here, not anymore.

She sees him working from afar in his office, his gaze intently fixed on something on his desk. His left hand is scribbling something down on a piece of paper, the look on his face one of pure focus.

She isn't sure why the thought pops up in her mind, it isn't as if it were the first time she'd thought about it. It was probably because he was writing, but for probably the third time since she's known him she wonders if he's always been left-handed.

She'd never thought to really ask him. Ever since day one of working at Oscorp, Gwen had told herself that any questions directed towards Connors that had to do with his missing arm or the accident that had caused it were strictly off limits.

Her heartbeat begins to accelerate with each step she takes towards his office, the urge to simply turn and run growing the closer she gets to him. She opens the doors slowly, quietly, an effort that she knows is probably pointless on her part considering that it's nearly impossible to get anything by him undetected now. In his Lizard state, at least. The abilities he'd maintained while human were still yet to be determined.

He doesn't look up at her though, even as she shuts the glass door behind her. Perhaps his senses weren't so heightened in this state after all. She approaches him slowly, not wanting to get too close but wanting him to be aware of her being there at the same time.

Upon closer inspection he looks almost normal, dressed in tan pants and a white button-down shirt beneath his lab coat. The only things out of place with his appearance were his usually combed blond hair which hangs loose across his forehead, and the absence of his glasses, leaving his intent green eyes in full view.

If it weren't for everything that had happened, if he hadn't been in the process of losing his sanity, she might say he almost looked well – attractive….

_Get a grip, Gwen. This is life and death here. This is hardly the time or the place. _

Although she mentally kicks herself when she realizes that this was hardly the first time she'd thought about him like that either.

"_Someone's hot for teacher." _She can still hear Phillip's taunt in the back of her mind, fresh as the night she'd heard it at dinner over a year ago.

It isn't until she's about ten feet away from the desk that he finally looks up at her.

It takes everything she has to will her expression to remain indifferent. To appear as unaffected as she possibly can under his gaze.

They stay like this for a bit, both just staring back at the other, him meeting her passive expression with a blank stare of his own, as if he were simply awaiting an explanation as to why she'd entered his office.

"What are you doing?" She asks partially as an attempt to fill the silence, but also because a part of her genuinely wants to know.

He pauses for a moment, as if he were choosing his next words carefully. Always so damn calculating, even now.

"Trying to alter this formula." His voice is composed, even.

And with that he averts his eyes back to the papers on his desk, erasing and scribbling notes just as he'd been before she'd walked in. As if her being there had no effect on him in the slightest.

It's far too vague of an answer for her liking, but she's sure that he'd planned it that way. Maybe he hadn't wanted to give too much of his plan away, which wouldn't make sense given the fact that he'd made his intentions crystal clear to everyone already. Or perhaps he didn't want to upset her by revealing what he was really doing.

Another ridiculous thought, why the hell would he care about sparing her feelings? But it wasn't a ridiculous thought because one thing was slowly becoming clear to her: _he did care_. More specifically he cared for _her_, cared enough for her to carry her from the lab to one of the rooms on the 52nd floor just so she wouldn't have to sleep under a desk in the lab. Cared enough for her that he hadn't harmed her once when she'd come face-to-face with the Lizard on multiple occasions. Cared enough for her that he'd wanted her around.

No. That wasn't it. He wasn't keeping her there out of sheer desire for her company. He was obviously using her as some sort of bait for Peter when he came to, or for her father and the NYPD in some sort of attempt to lure them all here and take them all out at once. She doesn't like the thought of either scenario, the thought of either Peter or her father being put in danger, and because of her no less.

"He'll kill you, you know." The words find their way out of her mouth before she even has time to consider them.

At this she has his attention again.

"Who?" His tone isn't bothered, but rather inquisitive.

"My father, when he comes back here with the rest of the NYPD." She walks closer to him, so that she's standing right next to him in his chair, not entirely sure where her sudden burst of confidence had come from. "Are you prepared for that, Doctor Connors? Are you prepared to _die_, over this?" She has to convince him somehow. To let go of this madness and give himself up, or to let her go at the very least so she didn't have to worry about Peter or her father coming to her rescue.

He stands up from his desk then, causing her to take half a step back. Gwen was of average height, but at over six feet tall Connors stood at least a head taller than her. She hadn't put her boots back on when she'd left the room she'd woken up in, and she now found herself wishing she had them on to provide her with some extra height.

Her eyes still never break away from his, her pride not allowing him to intimidate her.

"Everything ends. Everyone dies. I'll die. Norman Osborn will die, and eventually even Peter will die. It's an inevitability and we all might as well learn to accept it sooner rather than later."

"Osborn's going to recover." She isn't sure why she's choosing to tell him this. Maybe because Connors seemed to almost want him dead, and the fact that he'd live might get under his skin somehow.

"Says who?" He challenges, taking the bait.

"His son."

* * *

He lets out an almost dark chuckle, tearing his eyes away from hers to stare down at the floor. Of course Osborn would live, even the deadliest cancer in existence wouldn't be able to kill him.

"Osborn will live to see another day. How ironic, this was all for him, you know. The research, the serum, the human trials…" He drifts off a bit at the end, knowing full well that he'd willingly done this to himself, partially so others wouldn't have to face the same thing, but he wasn't about to pretend that his reasons for testing the serum on himself were completely selfless.

"I somehow doubt that." She sees right through him. He isn't surprised, of course she would.

He brushes off her comment, navigating away from it as if he hadn't heard it. "But, even so, it seems that Osborn will land on his feet once again." It isn't an accurate metaphor for Norman, the man was more of a cockroach than a cat. An insect, so small and insignificant, of no real value or importance to the world, and yet somehow he'd end up outliving them all.

"Were you hoping he wouldn't?"

He looks up at her again, her eyes still boring into him from before. Her eyes such a light shade of blue and combined with the coldness behind them were almost reminiscent of ice. In this moment, he thinks, perhaps she could hate him after all.

But somehow the idea of this doesn't bother him, because in this moment he's the focal point of her attention, on the receiving end of every emotion she has, and he wants all of them, no matter what they are. Her trust, her respect, her kindness, her hate, her spite: he wants all of her.

In this moment he's the center of her world, just as she was his.

"It's not that I wanted him to die. I just didn't care much whether he lived or not." His answer shouldn't seem like much of a shock, given the fact that anyone and everyone who knew Osborn probably felt the same way he did. Norman's own son probably didn't even care much for his father's well-being. And who could blame the boy? With a father like Norman, why should he?

His answer doesn't come as much of a surprise to her, it turns out. Her mouth still poised in a passive line, somewhere between a smirk and a frown, her expression not giving away an ounce of emotion.

But then something unusual happens. Her mask of indifference shifts into something different entirely, the clearly present emotion in her eyes one that she's never directed towards him, but something that given the absence of his right arm he had become well acquainted with over the years.

Sympathy.

This was new.

"Curt, do you ever hear voices? In your head?" Her voice is gentle, almost coaxing even.

He feels as if he's just been punched in the stomach, as if all the oxygen were retreating from his lungs at once. The use of his first name, which he knows is probably only the third time she's said it, (the other two instances being just earlier that day when she'd begged him to spare her father) the utterance of it implying both informality and intimacy. He's changed his mind. Her hate and her spite he'd earned, but her sympathy and concern were too much for him to bear.

The softness that had crept over her features was a thousand times more painful than the venomous glare she'd been throwing his way before. Her hatred he deserved, any kindness or mercy from her had no place here.

Surely he wasn't about to give her the honest answer, wasn't about to divulge the inner workings of his mind and its slow decent into madness. Worse yet, he'd never tell her that not only was he hearing voices, but one voice in particular. A voice that was usually a whisper, but when she was near almost turned into a scream, growing at such an increased volume with her presence as if it were calling for her, struggling to be heard.

But he's the only one that ever hears, the shouting of the voice enough to deafen him while she couldn't hear a thing.

If only she knew.

"Don't try to get inside my head, Gwen." His façade of composure has slipped, the tone of his voice filled with warning.

"Why not?"

He takes a step closer to her, close enough so that he's staring directly down into the depths of her blue eyes.

"You wouldn't like what you'd find."


End file.
